


The Year of Zero

by geekprincess26



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Broken Engagement, Debt, Domestic Violence, Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Family Drama, Jon won't leave Sansa alone, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Poor Life Choices, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Tragedy, broken relationships, but it's not what it sounds like, life and death, the darkest hour is just before dawn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-07-13 11:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: Sansa Stark is tired of trying, tired of failing, tired of struggling, tired of tragedy, and tired of life.  The debts she owes are all that keep her alive.  Once they've been paid, she can leave this world for good.  Or at least, she could if Jon Snow weren't in it.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS: major mental health issues, PTSD, and suicidal thoughts. This is a very dark story because it centers around Sansa, who is in a very dark and lonely place. I don't write this story lightly, and I've tried to write it with the utmost respect and honor for the brave people who struggle heavily with the weight of mental illness on their backs and shoulders and heads and hearts every single day. I've had severe depression messing up my own head for over 20 years now, just as Sansa has, and on some of those days, just living through the next five minutes takes a phenomenal amount of effort, especially when life has worn one down to the quick already. 
> 
> Still, there's an odd little thing called "hope" that keeps so many people going even on those days, with the deck stacked against them. Whether or not Sansa discovers it remains to be seen. To her and to my fellow sufferers who have hope and live in a hope that keeps me in awe, I salute you. This story is a part of my feeble tribute to your grit and guts and the incredible strength that you have and nobody else can fully appreciate. You are my heroes.

Prologue

 

_Confirm payment now?_ the browser window queried.

 

Sansa Stark’s forefinger danced over the trackpad on her aging laptop until the arrow on the screen hovered over the _Yes_ button.  Three firm clicks and a sigh later, the window closed and another message popped up.

 

_Congratulations, your payment of 451.87L has been confirmed.  Confirmation #4Z7135G29._

 

Sansa sighed again, just as the microwave in the other room beeped.  The stupid trackpad had been failing for months now, just like everything else she’d tried to do for the past ten years.

 

Everything else except one.

 

As usual, Sansa opened the microwave door slowly – it would shunt downwards off its hinges if she opened it too fast – and, as usual, removed a mug full of steaming soup.  Tonight’s helping consisted of half the can of chicken noodle she’d opened a few minutes earlier.  The rest was already sitting in a stained plastic container, tucked away into the door compartment of Sansa’s refrigerator.  Why she chose the door compartment she did not know; the shelves were wide open, after all.  Perhaps it was some stupid buried idea that she’d have the means to fill it one day.  She sighed again and opened the equally stained drawer just to her right and pulled out a spoon, one of three she had left. 

 

Once the soup had been sufficiently stirred and spoon and mug alike arranged carefully on the side table next to the living room’s single chair, Sansa reached into the basket next to the table and, as usual, retrieved the partially knitted blanket inside it.  The fabric was cleaner than any of Sansa’s clothes or furniture, and, alone of Sansa’s belongings, smelled faintly of the perfume she’d run out of a few months ago.  Sansa picked it up carefully and reached for the yarn attached to the most recent stitch.  It was black today, she noticed, and a grim smile crossed her face.

 

_How appropriate._

 

It would turn to gray and then slowly to white within another dozen or two stitches, she knew; the yarn was colored on a gradient.  And it might very well be white again at the end of the 452 stitches she would knit tonight.

 

But today marked exactly four years since Sansa had last spoken to any member of her family, so the color of mourning – _lack_ of color, the portion of her mind that insisted on recalling odd facts she’d learned in school every now and then reminded her – seemed altogether appropriate.

 

Sansa sighed again and started knitting.

 

_One, two, three…thirty-seven, thirty-eight…three hundred ninety-seven…four hundred twenty-eight…four hundred fifty-two._

Sansa looped the yarn neatly around the right-hand needle and just as neatly nestled the entire work back into its basket.  She reached for her soup, gave it a final stir, and tested the first spoonful with her lips.  _Perfect._

 

She hit the space-bar key on her laptop to awaken it, navigated to the spreadsheet she saved every day, and typed _451.87_ into the next empty cell.  Immediately, the corresponding cell in the next column updated itself.  Sansa watched as the number in it changed to _41,005.37._   Two columns over, the running total she kept changed in turn to _90.7459_.  Her gaze took in the total and flickered to the next column, which now read _7.5622_.

 

She did not need to review the last column, which never changed, but she did it anyway.

 

_March 31, 936._

 

Three days before Sansa’s fortieth birthday.

 

The day all of her columns would read zero.

 

The day her debts would be paid in full, assuming she incurred no others.  A grim laugh exploded from her mouth at the thought before she stifled it.

 

No, she had kept her four-year-old vow of _No more debts._   It meant that she would never have to experience being forty years old and stuck in an apartment that even most university students half her age would pass over without a second glance.  She would not have to spend her fortieth birthday listening to inquiry after pitying inquiry at work about whether she’d found herself a boyfriend yet, or a girlfriend, or even a cat.  With any luck, no gray hairs would yet have sprouted on her head, and she would not have to rake through it anxiously all day on the fortieth anniversary of her birth trying to look for one.

 

Because three days before that day, Sansa Stark would die.


	2. Chapter 1

_June 17, 908 AC_

 

“Sansa!”  Catelyn Stark’s voice drifted over the banisters lining the basement stairs and through the crack under the firmly closed door of her eldest daughter’s bedroom.  “Come and set the dinner table, please.”

 

Twelve-year-old Sansa squeezed her eyes shut and sighed with frustration.  It seemed but a few minutes since she’d had to set the table for lunch, and now it was dinnertime already.  Really, she had only had but a few minutes to herself that afternoon.  She’d had to wash the lunch dishes while her mother had ferried Bran and Rickon off to basketball practice, which would have been fine except that Arya, who’d been drying the dishes next to her, had been in a hurry to head off biking with her friends and done her job far too quickly, leaving streaks of water all over the plates.  As soon as Sansa had pointed that out, Arya had begun snapping at her, and Catelyn Stark had come home to find them in a blazing row.  They’d gotten to snapping each other with the dish towels, but Sansa had had the misfortune to be the only one of them her mother had actually seen in the act, so she’d gotten the harsher punishment, along with a stern admonition to act her age and be a better example to her sister.

 

So now she was stuck doing the dishes every night that week, and here it was only Tuesday.  It was doubly unfair because Robb was supposed to have washed the lunch dishes that day, and he could always handle Arya and her fits and pranks and immaturity better than Sansa could.  But Robb was at day camp for football this week, and her parents could hardly deny him the chance to improve his skills and possibly earn a place on the school varsity team that fall.  He would only be a freshman, but he was tall and broad for fourteen, and Coach Cassel had told the Starks he had a real chance.  So Robb had gone to camp and agreed to do the dinner dishes that week, which now fell to Sansa because he was away and Arya had gotten off on a lighter punishment yet again for yet another fight she’d started in the first place.

 

Sansa sighed again and willed her eyes open.  She might yet get another page of _Florian and Jonquil_ read before her mother –

 

“Sansa Lyarra!” Catelyn called, and Sansa flopped her feet off her bed to the floor.  She grabbed her favorite bookmark, the silver one with the pretty blue ribbon that she’d won for good grades last year in school, and tucked it carefully into the pages of her favorite book.  Another sigh left her lips as she mounted the stairs to the kitchen.

 

Catelyn barely spared her elder daughter a glance from the pot of stew she was stirring.  Sansa thought she might be able to escape to her room for a few more minutes before dinner if she set the table quickly enough, but just as she was placing the soup spoons, she heard the familiar creak of the back door and the even more familiar voices of her father and elder brother as they stopped to remove their shoes in the back entryway.

 

“Hey, Sans.”  Robb, hair still wet from his after-camp shower, wiggled her braid and grinned at her.  “What’s up?”

 

No sooner had Sansa opened her mouth than Rickon burst into the kitchen to tackle his oldest brother.  Robb laughed and swung Rickon upside-down, which earned him a fit of giggles from the younger boy and a “Robb, be _careful_ with him!” from Catelyn.  Sansa turned back to the table, sighed again, and finished placing the spoons.

 

No sooner had everyone sat down to the table than Ned Stark raised a hand to ward of the customary dinnertime chatter (less _chatter_ and more _noise_ , thought Sansa) about to erupt from his children’s lips.

 

“Before we talk about our days,” he said, “let’s go over what we’re doing tonight and tomorrow.  Robb has a ball game in – ” he glanced at the clock on the wall – “about an hour, and another tomorrow night at the same time.  Rickon, Bran, you’re home with Sansa; Arya, you’ll be coming with us.  We’ll do the same tomorrow; Robb has another game from his rain delay last week.  That should be all, right, Cat?”  He turned to his wife, who kept a whiteboard calendar fastened to the refrigerator with each child’s extracurricular activities written in a different color, and she nodded.

 

Sansa swallowed a sip of lemonade as fast as she could.  “Daddy,” she said, and Ned turned to look at her.  “I’ll be at Jeyne’s tomorrow night, not at Robb’s game.  Mrs. Poole will bring me home by 9:00.”

 

“Sansa, we need you here with Bran and Rickon,” Catelyn interjected.  “The game won’t be over till after their bedtime.”

 

Sansa frowned.  “But it’s on the calendar, Mum,” she reminded her mother.  “You said I could go.”

 

Catelyn sighed.  “Sorry, love,” she said.  “We didn’t know that Robb would have his makeup game tonight when I told you that.  I’ll call Mrs. Poole and tell her you can’t come.”

 

Sansa bit her lip.  She did not want to rouse her mother’s ire twice in one day, but she hadn’t seen her best friend since last week, and they were going to paint their nails with the lovely indigo nail polish Jeyne had just gotten after seeing it in _Westerosi Fashion Teen!_ , not to mention catching up on the latest episode of _Jenny of the Oldstones_. 

 

“Muuum,” she began, but her father narrowed his eyes just a bit – not so much that he was angry, but it was still enough to silence Sansa.

 

“Sansa,” he admonished her.  “Respect your mother, please.  We need you here with Bran and Rickon.”  He turned to his wife.  “Maybe you can go to Jeyne’s another night if Mrs. Poole says yes.”

 

Sansa’s shoulders began to slump.  She wanted to ask why Bran and Rickon couldn’t just have a babysitter, but she knew better than to argue.  A moment later, a new plan occurred to her, and she straightened back up in her seat. 

 

“Maybe Friday, after my dance recital?” she asked hopefully.  Ned threw his wife a questioning look.

 

Catelyn sighed.  “Oh, that’s right,” she said.  “I’d thought for a moment it was next Friday instead.  Robb’s got another game, so if she can take you there and then back to her house, that should work fine.”

 

Sansa’s eyebrows and nose wrinkled.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Robb stifle a grin at what he’d called her “scrunch face” since she was a baby and he was three years old.

 

“I thought you and Daddy were taking me,” she said, but Catelyn shook her head.

 

“Rickon’s got basketball that night,” she said, “so I’ll be taking him and Bran there.  Dad will take Arya to Robb’s game.”

 

Sansa’s shoulders dropped again.  She and Jeyne were performing the Rosy Reel with Alys Karstark and Wylla Manderly on Friday, and it was a five-minute dance, representing by far the biggest role Sansa had ever taken on stage.  Even Mrs. Poole, who had never been much of a one for dance, had been clucking with excitement over watching it.  But Sansa knew any protest on her part would be futile, so she went back to sipping her lemonade in silence with her eyes fixed on her dinner plate.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

“Then Rickon ran outside because he wouldn’t go to bed, the idiot, and I told him I’d tell Mum on him, but he said he didn’t care because I couldn’t punish him for it, anyway.”

 

Sansa rolled her eyes as she finished her tale and passed the nail polish brush to Jeyne, whose mother had after all agreed to Sansa’s coming to their house on Friday night instead of Wednesday.  Jane rolled her eyes harder, if possible.

 

“Ugh,” she replied.  “I’m glad I don’t have a little brother; Elna and Freya are almost bad enough for three brothers, anyway.”

 

Sansa grinned.  Jeyne was almost always complaining about the antics of her twin six-year-old sisters.

 

“Better them than Arya, still,” she said, and Jeyne sighed.

 

“Fair point,” she replied.  “At least we won’t be in school with her next year.”

 

“I _know_ ,” Sansa said.  Her grin rose to match her friend’s.  Both had graduated from Winterfell Elementary School that spring and would attend Robett P. Glover Middle School in the fall.

 

“So when’s your grandma taking you for new clothes?” Jeyne asked, brushing the polish gently over the smallest nail on her right foot.  Sansa’s grandmother always took her and Arya to the mall to buy them each a new outfit for school at the end of each summer.

 

Sansa shrugged.  “I don’t think she’s set it with Mum yet,” she replied, and took the brush out of Jeyne’s outstretched hand to dip it in the polish bottle.

 

“Well, make sure she gets you something nice, not frumpish like last year’s,” Jeyne said and reached up to grab the newest issue of _Westeros Fashion Teen!_ from her bed.  She flipped over a few pages and held it out to Sansa.  “Something like this one.”

 

She pointed to a picture of a grinning blonde girl in a bright green choker top and a dark denim crop skirt with an artful slit lined with a swath of green and yellow plaid.  Sansa frowned.  Since when did Jeyne use the word _frumpish_?  Probably since her aunt had gotten her a subscription to the magazine for her birthday earlier that year, she decided.  That didn’t mean Grandma Stark would buy her an outfit like the one Jeyne had just shown her, though.  She would probably say the skirt was too short.  Besides, Sansa had liked last year’s outfit just fine, although perhaps she could persuade her grandmother to buy her a denim skirt in a longer length instead of her usual twill pants.

 

“We can’t be the idiot sixth-graders who walk into a load of eighth-graders looking like dorks,” Jeyne continued.  “Or a load of boys.  Lena says most of the boys in our year are hopelessly immature, but some of the seventh- and eighth-graders will treat you properly, or even ask you to the autumn dance, if you’re dressed smart and know your football teams.”  She grinned as she grabbed a bottle of nail enamel dryer from the shelf behind her.  “Myrcella Baratheon’s older brother Joffrey is in seventh this year, remember?  I saw her the other day, and she said he just broke up with Tyene Sand.”  Her voice rose with the hissing noise of the spray leaving the can.  “He and his mates are all _gorgeous_.  Just think if we each got one of them for the dance!”

 

Sansa would have asked whether the magazine subscription had made Jeyne get so superfluous about a load of boys, but then she had met Joffrey Baratheon before, and she did have to admit he was cute.  And it would be awfully nice to get asked to the dance – maybe then she could talk Mum into getting her another new dress that way, and she’d seen the loveliest pale blue one at the mall the other day.  And if a boy as popular and cute as Joffrey Baratheon asked her to the dance, maybe Leta Dormund and her friends would slack off calling Sansa a nerd, geek, dork, and prissy all the time.

 

Sansa peered down at her toenails and smiled.  The nail polish looked even prettier than she’d thought.  Maybe that magazine had done Jeyne some good after all.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

_October 17, 928 AC_

 

Sansa wiped a stray strand of hair out of her face and opened her junk drawer for its annual cleaning.  One more drawer after this, and she could drag her ancient vacuum cleaner back to the closet and call it a day.  She might even eat the whole chocolate bar sitting in the refrigerator, instead of just half, both to mark the end of such an exhausting afternoon and to celebrate the fact that the twenty-year-old machine, which she’d bought back in college and had never been able to afford replacing, was still going strong.  God only knew she couldn’t afford to buy a new vacuum cleaner if this one bit the dust.

 

She snorted at her own unintentional pun and reached to the back of the drawer.  Her hand closed around an address book, two photo frames, and a tiny bottle with a smeared silver lid.  Sansa put down the other items and shook it out of instinct.  It was the first thing she’d done when she’d gotten her hands on Jeyne’s bottle of nail polish that Friday night after their dance recital.  Less than half the contents remained, and over the years they had separated until the layer of clear liquid on top was almost as thick as its more colorful counterpart on the bottom.  Sansa had nearly thrown it away any number of times, but she’d stopped trying a few years back.  It was, after all, all she had left of Jeyne.

 

Sansa put the bottle down and reached back to empty the drawer.  Ten more minutes and she could collapse into her chair and pay today’s bill, not to mention check the total, although she already knew what it would be.  She’d calculated it in her head every day for a month now.

 

After today’s payment of 451.87 Lions, she’d have 40,553.50 Lions left to pay.  If she paid the same amount – the maximum she could afford – every month, it would take 89.7459 months for her to pay it.  That translated to 7.4788 years.

 

7.4788 years until March 31, 936.

 

Sansa flipped the vacuum cleaner’s power switch on.  She would definitely have the whole chocolate bar tonight.

 


	3. Chapter 2

_October 2, 913 AC_

 

“Let’s turn you around, Sansa, and…smile!”

 

Sansa cringed inwardly at being addressed like an eight-year-old child by the man who had just spent the past fifteen minutes poking, prodding, and paining every corner of her mouth.  The fact that he was her semi-best friend’s father did not help matters one whit.  However, she stifled a sigh and flashed her teeth in Dr. Poole’s mirror as instructed.  Fortunately, they’d let her keep her glasses on, so she didn’t have to lean too far forward to see the two neat rows of teeth that greeted her in the mirror.   She leaned forward anyway, and nearly fell out of her chair.  Leta, Dr. Poole’s nurse, caught her just in time.

  
“Whoa!” she exclaimed, helping Sansa to her feet.  “You crack that mirror, girlie, and we’ll have to charge the new one to your bill.”

 

She winked, and Sansa smiled weakly, taking another glance into the mirror just to be sure all traces of the blue and silver braces that had tormented her mouth for the last four years were gone.  They were.  She sighed with relief.  Now she could go to her senior homecoming dance looking like a normal human being.   Well, that and lose seven more pounds so she could buy a dress to match Jeyne Poole’s.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

“Nope.”

 

Sansa felt another tug at her back as Jeyne jerked the zipper on her dress for the fifth or sixth time in a row. 

 

“It still won’t go,” grunted Jeyne, sounding exasperated.  “God, Sansa, how many brownies did you eat at Theon’s the other night?”

 

Tears sprang to Sansa’s eyes.  For once, she was glad her eyes had itched that morning, rendering her unable to wear her contact lenses.  The thick lenses of her glasses hid her tears much more readily.

 

“I – look, I can hold in more,” she offered once she trusted her voice not to wobble too badly.   
“Here.”

 

She sucked a lungful of air through her nostrils and pulled her waist as tight as it would go.  Jeyne sighed and gave the zipper an almighty yank.  She swore, and Sansa’s face fell.

 

“It’s not going the last two inches, Sansa,” Jeyne informed her after a pregnant pause.  “You’ll have to get the next size up.”

  
The news alone made Sansa’s cheeks bloom red, but the annoyance in her friend’s tone was what made Sansa hesitate as long as she could before she turned to meet the other girl’s disapproving look.  Keeping Jeyne as her friend had meant walking on a whole lot of eggshells since the seventh or eighth grade; she’d developed a great figure and a passion for the cheerleading and dance squads that gave her both a slew of new friends and a schedule of activities to which Sansa and her attendant honors society and writing clubs were complete strangers.  But Sansa had not wanted to lose her oldest and dearest friend, so she had willingly given up some of her precious alone time, when she could sequester herself in her room during the evenings unbothered by her siblings and parents, in order to hang out with Jeyne and her new group of friends.  Of course, being seen with Jeyne’s friends in public meant looking one’s most fashionable and least nerdy, as Jeyne had informed her pointedly on many an occasion.  And fashionable, Sansa soon discovered to her chagrin, excluded the scarves and purses she’d sewn for herself.  It also meant that Sansa, whose glasses had remained her constant companions up until the ninth grade, had had to compensate for them by showing up in as many trendy outfits as her budget would allow.  That had caused a few arguments with her parents, who saw her spending as frivolous and a few of her necklines questionable.  Sansa had once gotten so tired of their nagging and so equally tired of their praise over Robb’s and Arya’s much more laudable savings habits that she had informed them they should consider themselves lucky she hadn’t bought any of the _really_ fashionable necklines, which would make Britney Spears herself blush.  It had come out sounding awfully stupid, partly because Sansa herself felt too exposed in some of her necklines.  But Jeyne, after all, was her friend, and friends stuck up for friends, even when that got them grounded, which was where Sansa’s remarks had gotten her in no time flat.  Jeyne had commiserated a bit when Sansa had told her about it the next day, but her sympathy about the necklines had been limited.

 

“Ugh,” she’d said, rolling her eyes as she popped a grape into her mouth at the lunch table.  “What do they want you to go out in, overalls or a gunny sack?”

 

Sansa had bit her lip to keep quiet.  She personally thought coveralls at least as cute as boyfriend jeans when worn with the right top, and awfully practical to boot, but Jeyne’s crowd considered them hopelessly frumpish, so Sansa avoided wearing them.

 

“Anyway,” continued Jeyne, picking another grape off her bunch, “once I’ve lost another six pounds, I’ll be a size three.  It’d be a bloody crime to cover that up.”

 

She patted her stomach, which was perfectly flat and in no need of further trimming to Sansa’s eye.  Not that she’d said that to Jeyne, of course.

 

“Are you sure?” she asked instead.  She hated the pleading note that had crept into her voice, but being the only girl in Jeyne’s group to go to the dance in a size seven dress instead of a size five stung harder than she had thought it would.

 

Jeyne shot her a dirty look.  “Duh.  I’ve only calculated it hundreds of times.  Back before spring break, when I weighed 107 pounds, I could still fit into a three.  When I got up to 108 pounds, I had to wear a five.”  Seeing Sansa’s puzzled look, she rolled her eyes and waved her hand in dismissal.  “Never mind, you weren’t on our trip.  You were back here with Edda Tallhart and Dacey Mormont.  Of course you wouldn’t remember.”

 

Sansa sighed.  Eddara (or Edda, as she preferred to be called) and Dacey were her best friends apart from Jeyne.  They had all joined writing club in the ninth grade, and in tenth they had joined the school paper staff.  Sansa had discovered a connection with her fellow English literature nerds that she’d never quite had with Jeyne, but they had no interest in cheerleading or dance or any of Jeyne’s other hobbies, and both at least a size eleven to boot, so of course Jeyne had turned up her nose at them, and the feeling was mutual.  Sansa’s friendship with each was a sore spot with the other, although Edda and Dacey had taken it better than Jeyne and her squad had.  Any mention of Dacey, Edda, writing club, or anything else they deemed too nerdy was met with sniffs and eye-rolls, and Jeyne had reminded Sansa more than once that Sansa was only deemed still acceptable by the group because Jeyne had been nice enough to stick her neck out on her friend’s behalf.  So when she’d been accepted onto the homecoming dance planning committee and invited to attend the dance with Jeyne and her friends, she’d been thrilled and tried extra hard to diet and lose the pounds she’d need to fit into a size five dress like everyone else’s, especially now that Waymar Royce seemed to have his eye on her.  He was tall, dark, and handsome and had dreamy dark blue eyes, and she’d been trying to get his attention since the tenth grade, but only recently had he taken any notice of Sansa.  The first day she had shown up at school without her braces, he’d glanced at her twice in the hallway, and the next day, when he’d nodded at her and said, “I like your look, Stark,” Sansa had barely made it around the corner without squealing at Jeyne like a loon.  Jeyne had rolled her eyes, but she’d agreed after a moment that Waymar had definitely been checking Sansa out.  After that, Sansa had renewed her efforts to look her best for the dance.  Maybe, she thought, her gaze flitting longingly to the mirror one last time before she turned away at the sight of the dress constricting her like a stuffed sausage, nobody would tell him she was wearing a bigger dress than the others if she could beg everyone to keep quiet about it.

 

“I meant the dress,” Sansa murmured after another moment.  “You’re sure it won’t fit, Jeyne?”

 

Jeyne only rolled her eyes.  “No,” she sighed, clearly more irritated than she had been a minute ago.  “You’ll have to get a seven.”

 

Sansa twirled to face away from her friend.  The fabric of the skirt swooped out into a lovely bloom of purple as she did.  She felt a tear trickle out of the corner of one eye.

 

“All right,” she said.  “I’ll be right out.”

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

“Sansa!  Over here, Wylla wants another makeup shot!”

 

Sansa sighed and set down the mascara tube on Jeyne’s nightstand.  Jeyne’s entire group of friends had gathered at her house to get ready for the homecoming dance, with the understanding that their parents would arrive later to take photos before the entire group departed for Hornwood’s Steakhouse for dinner.  Sansa’s mother would only be staying for a few minutes, as she and Ned were headed off to White Harbor University to attend another of Robb’s football games.  Sansa sighed again.  All of her school dances and honors society events save one or two had somehow fallen on the same date as some game or another of Robb’s, and now that Robb was at university, his events won out over hers for their parents’ attention almost every time.  In fact, Robb was likelier to text her to ask how the dance had gone and go on Facebook to like her pictures of it than her parents were, since they’d barely see her after they drove back tomorrow before heading off to Bran’s science fair.

 

“Sansa!”  Jeyne’s tone verged on annoyance now, and Sansa quickly scurried over to Jeyne’s group, grabbing her iPhone off the vanity as she did so.  After everyone had snapped a quick selfie, they scattered to finish arranging their hair.  Sansa, who found herself confined to the corner of the vanity nearest Jeyne’s bed, had wanted to arrange hers in a series of cascading plaits patterned after the pictures she’d seen of women from the Age of Dragons in her Northern history books, but everyone had scoffed at that idea as far too nerdy.  Sansa had compromised at leaving half her hair down in loose curls like the other girls’ and focusing all of her braiding efforts on the top half of her head.  However, she hadn’t used hot rollers in over a year, so when she took the first one out, she accidentally grabbed part of it too far off the edge, singeing her finger.

 

“Ouch!” she yelped, and whipped the affected limb into her mouth, letting the roller fall out of her hair onto the floor.

 

“Hey, watch my roller, Sansa!”  Jeyne yelled across the room.  “I don’t want it crushed.”

 

Sansa sighed, chased the offending object down, grabbed it gingerly with her left hand, and set it on the corner of the vanity.  That earned her a nasty look from Jeyne, so she sighed, picked it up again, and threaded it back onto its rod on the holder.  She rolled her eyes at her friend and headed to the bathroom to run cold water onto her finger.

 

“Hey, Sansa.”  Sansa emerged from the bathroom to see Alys Karstark and her iPhone straight in front of her.  Sansa forced herself to smile instead of batting Alys’s hand away, like she wanted to.   Alys, after all, was the most popular girl in Jeyne’s group (and the most opposed to all things nerd) and close friends with Waymar Royce to boot, and one word from her could turn Waymar against Sansa in a heartbeat.  Besides, the other girls had been whispering that all six members of Jeyne’s and Alys’s inner circle were sure to win the #SquadGoals Award during the homecoming awards ceremony that night, and as one of the six, Sansa could not afford to ruffle Alys’s feathers even if the other girl had never laid eyes on Waymar at all.

 

“Ditching the nerds for the night?” said Alys.  Sansa nodded, although she half wanted to smack the phone out of Alys’s hand.  Alys and the others had given her constant grief about her friendship with Dacey and Edda, whom they had variously termed nerds, geeks, dorks, dweebs, and losers, during the homecoming committee’s planning meetings.

 

“Right,” she said, giving Alys her most grateful smile, since the video was sure to make it onto Facebook and Instagram.

 

“Yeah?  Why’s that?”  Alys giggled.  Just like most of her smiles, the sound had a sharp edge to it.

 

“Because I want to have fun, that’s why,” Sansa grinned.  She batted her eyelashes and twirled full circle in front of the camera.

 

Alys laughed and rolled her eyes.  “God, Sansa, only dorks do that.  Jeyne!”  She turned to yell over her shoulder.  “Get over here and show Sansa how to dance fit for public viewing!”

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

Sansa tried her best that night to dance fit for public viewing according to Jeyne.  She’d stopped taking dance lessons nearly four years previously, but she felt her past training kick in after a couple of dances.  Her hair swirled around her in time with her skirt, and Waymar Royce asked her to dance twice, and despite her size-seven dress, she felt a bit pretty after all.  She even did a punch toast with Jeyne and her friends, although she discreetly set her glass aside after hearing Alys whisper to Wylla that Cley Cerwyn had spiked it.

 

Halfway through the dancing, the band took a break, and Dalla North and Rodrik Mazin, as the chair of student activities and class body president, respectively, took to the stage to present the homecoming court.  Sansa had not been selected for it, but she clapped politely for Jeyne, Alys, Waymar, and the others who had as they mounted the stage.

 

“Also calling up the planning committee members,” said Rodrik, and Sansa could not help but smile as she and the few other members who had not already been called as part of the homecoming court headed up to stand next to Rodrik and Dalla.  She beamed as Rodrik passed the microphone to Alys, who swept past him to the front of the stage.

 

“As chair of the homecoming committee,” she cooed, “I’ll present the first ever social media segment of the homecoming awards.”

 

A series of cheers greeted her announcement.  Sansa, clapping along with the others, felt her face flush and stopped herself just short of rolling her bottom lip between her teeth.  Apparently, four years away from the dance stage had made her forget how to compose herself in front of an audience.  At least, as with her dance recitals, she would get rewarded for it, she told herself, and turned her focus back to Alys, who had just announced Dalla and Mance Rayder as the recipients of the #RelationshipGoals award.  Mance and Dalla, never a couple to shy away from the PDA, made out for at least thirty seconds by Sansa’s count before lifting their gaudy silver trophy over their heads.

 

“The first ever #SquadGoals award,” announced Alys, “goes to…Oops, Rodrik, you’ll have to announce this one.”

 

She winked at him as she handed over the slip of paper she was holding.  Rodrik grinned back at her.  Sansa felt an expectant smile spread across her face.

 

“And the winner goes to…” Rodrik gave his best imitation of a drumroll noise, to the groans of the student assembly.  “Right…Alys Karstark!  Jeyne Poole!  Wylla Manderly!  Anya Glover!  Aaaand…Jyanna Hornwood!”

 

Jeyne, Wylla, Anya, and Jyanna rushed to the center of the stage to join Alys and her megawatt grin.  Sansa went one or two steps after them before she stopped short.

 

_Wait.  And…Sansa Stark.  Right?_

 

She stared at Rodrik, the question inscribed all over her face, but he paid her no attention.  Sansa turned to Alys, then Jeyne, then each of the other girls in turn, but got no more of a reaction from any of them.  She cleared her throat, hoping that Jeyne, who was only a few steps away from her, would notice, but Jeyne did not.  She was too busy posing for the group photo.

 

None of them sent so much as a glance Sansa’s way – not then, not when Alys and the others squealed and gathered for an impromptu group hug, not when they flipped their identically curled locks over their shoulders in perfect unison for more photos, and certainly not when Rodrik pulled the next awards announcement from his pocket.  The other girls scattered then, but none of them would look at Sansa.  She might as well have been invisible.

 

Her eyes burned nearly to bursting with the tears it took all her might to restrain, and she wished with all her heart that she could be as invisible as she felt.  Instead, she focused on rooting her feet to their spot on the stage. 

 

Just a few more awards, a few more minutes, and she could leave it for good.

 

“And, last but not least…”  Alys paused for dramatic effect as she pulled yet another slip of paper from her silver clutch.  “It’s Wintertown High’s first #WhatWasSheThinking? Award!”

 

A flurry of whispers broke out to Sansa’s left.  She turned to see three or four very surprised-looking teachers just off the stage.  It looked like nobody had seen fit to inform them about this particular honor being handed out.  Sansa, who had often heard Alys mutter witty insults to people’s backs as they turned away from her, was not quite as surprised.

 

She was surprised, however, when Alys opened her mouth to continue.

 

“Was she thinking Good Queen Alysanne’s braids could make a comeback?  Did she mistake her history books for _Highgarden’s Bazaar?_  Was she thinking a size 14 – oops – seven – ”  Alys dramatically clapped a hand over her mouth – “was really a five?  What _was_...”  She paused for a moment before shaking open the piece of paper. “…Sansa Stark thinking?  Give it up, ladies and gentlemen!”

 

It took Sansa several moments to reconcile Alys’s words.  Her face, however, worked ahead of her brain, since she felt it go red as a beet a moment before her own hand flew up to cover her mouth far less intentionally than Alys’s.

 

Off to Sansa’s right, Mrs. Mordane, her math teacher, let out a scandalized gasp.  Straight in front of her, Alys’s nose wrinkled as it did only after she’d uttered her cruelest insults.  Next to her, Waymar Royce doubled over with laughter.  Rodrik, Wylla, Anya, and Jyanna followed suit all at once, in slow motion, and even Jeyne began to giggle.  Her eyes met Sansa’s for one brief, horrible moment before Sansa turned away off to her left, which was a mistake, because she found herself facing hundreds of tittering, jeering, staring students.  Their faces blurred rapidly as the burning sensation behind Sansa’s eyes burst out and down her cheeks.  Her only salvation lay behind her, and she pivoted on her heels as fast as she could.  As luck would have it, one of her silver heels caught the edge of her skirt, and the stage rushed up to meet her outstretched hands in a blur.  Pain shot up her arms and legs, and Sansa felt her teeth chatter.  She rolled over onto her back and for a moment considered just lying there and never opening her eyes.  But it was silly to hope the stage would swallow her whole, so she forced her body back around and her shaking feet past the backstage curtain, down the stairs, through the halls, and out into the chilly October night.  She reached into the depths of her purse to fish out a few tissues, then zipped the bag again and clutched it against her aching body, keeping her head down into the breeze as she blew into the tissues and headed through the parking lot.  Her tears sizzled down her shoulders and arms and slowly chilled until their paths stopped at the edges of her gown and wrists.  She wandered aimlessly for several minutes before it occurred to her that Jeyne, who had driven her to the dance, could not reasonably be expected to drive her home.

 

_Jeyne.  Even Jeyne laughed.  Even Jeyne._

 

Sansa reached across her shoulder and swore at her bag, which was now sliding off the affected limb for the ninth or tenth time.  Her cold fingers worked at the zipper and dug fruitlessly for more tissues.  She swore again, then stopped mid-sentence as her hand brushed against the cold metal of a halfgroat copper coin.

 

Just enough, she realized a few moments later, for a one-way city bus trip.

 

Sansa shivered even harder, rubbed her rapidly stiffening hands against her upper arms, and headed back across the parking lot.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

No sooner had Sansa locked her bedroom door than she collapsed on her bed.  The curtains, which she always kept closed at night, were open, but she did not move a muscle to open them.  Her dragonfly-shaped lamp, which she turned on every night to read in bed, sat dull and lifeless on her night table, but she did not bother reaching for the switch.  Her heels ached against the cheap insides of her silver shoes, but she did not reach down to unbuckle them.  Her phone buzzed again and again, but Sansa let it go. 

 

Eventually, a pressing need to use the bathroom forced her to her feet and into the hallway.  When she got back, she yanked her shoes off, unzipped her dress, and dumped out her purse to grab what she could salvage of the used tissues inside it.  Her phone buzzed again and fell faceup, just in time for Sansa to see a text message pop up onto the _Babe Squad_ text thread she, Jeyne, Alys, Wylla, Anya, and Jyanna had created.

 

 _#squadgoals 4ever,_ it read, next to a trophy emoticon.  The message had come from Jyanna’s phone.  Above it were three sideways laughing emoticons from Alys, next to the text _Sansa tho…_

 

Sansa slammed the home button to get the thing out of her sight, which blurred the next moment with a fresh wave of tears.  That did not, however, prevent her from seeing the Facebook notification popping up onto her screen.  She swiped at it out of instinct, and the app opened to show Alys’s latest post, which consisted of the text _She had fun all right,_ bordering a photo of Sansa onstage earlier that night, her teary eyes widened at a very unflattering angle and her waist twisting to make her look 20 pounds heavier than her actual weight.  Sansa clicked furiously at the screen in an effort to navigate to her profile page and untag herself, but instead she clicked on the photo, which turned out to be the opening screen of a short video culminating in her falling flat on the stage floor. 

 

“Aaaaww, poor size-seven Sansa!” Alys’s mocking voice echoed from behind the camera.  Sansa stabbed at the home button again but succeeded only in bringing up profiles of all her open apps, then selecting Facebook Messenger, where her last conversation with Jeyne hung unfinished on the screen.

 

 _B right there,_ read Sansa’s final response to Jeyne.  Sansa swiped at her tears and punched twice at the keyboard before sending her message to Jeyne.

 

_Y?_

Then she curled up on the bed, her open zipper exposing her bare back to the chilly basement air, and sobbed.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

A sharp knock awoke Sansa to sunlight streaming through her bedroom windows.  She instinctively rolled over onto her bare back, letting her comforter warm the cold skin.  As she did so, her hand brushed her phone.

 

Sansa shoved it away at once as the words from last night’s Facebook posts and message exchanges danced around her brain.

 

 _I didn’t know Alys was planning that, but face it, ur a bit of a dork._   A photo of a pouty-lipped and clearly tipsy Jeyne had appeared immediately after the text.  The distinctive wallpaper in Alys’s bedroom had filled the rest of the photo, which meant Jeyne (and, no doubt, the others) had kept to their plans to gather at the Karstarks’ house for an afterparty while Alys’s parents were out. 

 

 _That’s all you have to say???!!!!!!!!_ Sansa had typed furiously, although she knew she wouldn’t get a sober answer out of Jeyne at that point.  _U laughed at me, have you seen Facebook?_

 

Sansa was jarred back to reality by the buzzing of her phone.  Yet another Facebook notification had popped up with yet another recurrence of the _Size Sevan Sansa_ meme featuring Alys’s ugly photo of her from last night (whoever had made it couldn’t even be trusted to spell right). 

 

“Sansa Lyarra!”  Catelyn Stark’s voice jarred Sansa out of bed.  She hastily zipped up her dress as best she could and opened the door, only to freeze in place when she saw the fury written all over her mother’s face.

 

“Get dressed and come upstairs _now_ , young lady,” said Catelyn, enunciating each word so sharply Sansa shuddered.  “Your father and I need to talk to you.”

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

Sansa spent the next hour in front of the family computer in the living room, where her parents had pulled up her Facebook page, where she was greeted by a portion of the video Alys Karstark had shot at Jeyne’s house the previous night.

 

“Ditching the nerds for the night?” Alys’s giggling voice filled the living room the moment Catelyn Stark pressed the “Play” button.  Sansa buried her face in her hands.

 

“Right,” she heard her own voice answer Alys.

 

“Yeah?  Why’s that?”  Alys’s mocking laugh had never sounded so hollow or ugly before.

 

“Because I want to have fun, that’s why.”

 

Silence descended upon the room until Ned Stark broke it.

 

“Sansa,” he sighed, “why did you do this?”

 

Catelyn opened her mouth to speak, but Ned rested a gentle hand on her arm.  He turned his eyes to Sansa.  They were big and gray and sad, and they rather than Catelyn’s seething anger made Sansa start to cry all over again.

 

“Edda’s mother called me this morning,” said Catelyn.  “Edda cried an hour straight.  She’s been bullied before, but not by someone who’s always called herself Edda’s friend, and certainly not by my daughter.  And Dacey’s mother’s seen it too.  All I could tell either of them – after we had to leave White Harbor without having breakfast with Robb, like we’d planned, so we could deal with this – was that we raised you better than this, Sansa.”

 

Sansa opened her mouth, but it would only produce sobs, no words.  Finally, after a good deal more crying and hiccupping, she swallowed back enough tears to speak.

 

“But I did too!” she burst out finally.  “It’s not – not – not even what it looks like, Mum, it’s _not_ , or it is but I wish I hadn’t said it, and it’s not half as bad as Alys, and if you saw Facebook more, you’d see it was her, and she posted it on purpose, and then all the horrid stuff about me!”

 

The tears burst out again.  Ned looked confused.  Catelyn looked confused but still angry.  Sansa shivered and swallowed in vain, and finally, instead of trying to speak again, forced herself to navigate to one of Alys’s videos and play it for her stunned parents, then another, and then another.

 

When she could stand it no longer, she turned to face her parents.  Catelyn sighed heavily.  Ned rubbed his hand repeatedly over the spot on his forehead that hurt the most whenever he got one of his headaches.

 

“Love, I’m sorry,” he finally said, and reached over to lay a gentle hand on his daughter’s arm.

 

“We both are,” added Catelyn.  “But that does not excuse what you’ve done, Sansa.  We expect you to apologize to Edda and Dacey, of course, and their parents, but you’re going to have other consequences too.”  She glanced over at Ned.  “Your father and I will decide what privileges to revoke and how long by the end of today.  I’m thinking no driving for a month, at least, and no going out with Jeyne and everyone for at least the next two weekends – ”

 

“I – ”  Another hiccup burst out of Sansa’s throat.  “But I – duh, I won’t go out with them, Mum, that’s the point they won’t go out with _me_!  Did you _see_ Facebook just now?  They wouldn’t be caught dead out with me, and I’m sorry, I am, and I’ll tell Edda and Dacey, but did you _see_ what Alys posted about me – us – and a _month_ , Mum?”

 

The fire had crept back into Catelyn Stark’s blue eyes.

 

“You still do not get to interrupt me, Sansa,” she said firmly.  “I was not done addressing you, and if you don’t mind your manners, it will be six weeks – ”

 

“Six weeks?” Sansa burst out.  “Robb got two, and that was when he stayed out drunk all night, Mum, and you and Dad called the _police_ to look for him!”

 

“Yes, and now you get six, young lady,” replied Catelyn.  Next to her, Ned sighed.

 

“Cat,” he said, “we can discuss the rest of by ourselves.  Sansa – ” he turned to his daughter.  “No disrespect for your mother.  Why don’t you go back to your room now, so your mother and I can resolve this before we leave with Bran.”

 

Sansa stared at him in disbelief.

 

“I – Dad, I’m sorry, I am, but it’s not _fair_ – ” she began.  Catelyn’s mouth opened again, and Sansa, realizing it would be no use at all, shut her own and trudged back down the stairs to her room.

 

She spent the next two hours alternately crying and trying to ignore the incessant buzzing of her phone.  Just as she reached over to switch it off, a text popped up from Robb.

 

 _Hey Sans, you OK?_   Worried emoticon.

 

Sansa’s eyes, which had just begun to dry up properly, erupted again.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

_October 17, 929 AC_

 

Sansa yanked open the bathroom drawer and cursed under her breath.  She could have sworn she’d had one more rubber band in there for her hair, and she really needed it now that the one she’d been trying to tie her hair back with had snapped.  Her left thumb rubbed her fingers, which had been stung by one end of the broken rubber band, and her right shoved aside scrunchies, combs, and bobby pins alike.  She pulled the drawer all the way open, and the bathroom light flashed off of something at the back.  Curious, Sansa dug it out.  She swore again when she saw what it was.

 

She hadn’t thought she still had any of the purple crystal pins she’d used in her hair the night of the homecoming dance.  Apparently this one had survived.  Not for long, though.  Sansa flung it into the trash bin by her toilet, which had sat half-empty for the better part of a month now.  All she had to fill it with, after all, were cotton balls and tissues, and now one stray reminder of a night that she wished to God felt like it were the actual sixteen years in the past that it actually was.

 

Sansa sighed and turned back to the drawer.  Most of her energy had vanished with her ejection of the hairpin, but she managed to shuffle listlessly through the drawer until she located her last rubber band all the way at the back.  She turned off the bathroom light, trudged into the living room, and opened her laptop to see whether she could afford to buy more rubber bands before she got paid next.  After all, her next round of bills was due today.

 

The screen flickered on, which it was taking longer and longer to do these days, and Sansa navigated to the loan website to make her 451.87-Lion payoff.  As soon as the _Payment confirmed_ message popped up, she opened her bill tracking spreadsheet to enter her payment.

 

Today’s payment left her with a debt remaining of 35,131.06 Lions and 77.7459 months to pay it off.

 

She had 6.4788 years left to live, and – she navigated back to the Internet to confirm her bank balance – enough to buy one package of rubber bands tomorrow to navigate the next year or two.  If she were lucky and it was two, that meant she’d buy her next package around the four-year mark and another at the two-year milestone.

 

She might only have to buy two more packages of rubber bands in her life.  _Huh_.

 

Sansa opened a new tab on her spreadsheet.  If she started keeping track of her household goods usage now, she could come up with an excellent estimate of what she’d need to spend  on them before she died.

 

She let out a bitter laugh as she thought about how differently her life might have turned out had she been this good at budgeting to begin with. 

 

But no, she still would have run into Joffrey Baratheon, and no budgeting skills on earth could have made up for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Joffrey Baratheon. Sansa will be making his unfortunate acquaintance in the next chapter, along with another, perhaps less unfortunate, one.


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I've updated this fic's tags to include domestic violence. This chapter contains a fair bit of it. Joffrey Baratheon is not a nice person, and his actions play a huge role in Sansa's dark state of mind.

_September 1, 915 AC_

 

“Sansa and Joffrey sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

 

Sansa Stark looked up from her homework, rolled her eyes, and shot Mya Stone her dirtiest look.

 

“What, we’re back to the third grade now?” she sighed.  “Good God, Mya, how about at least something beyond junior high?”

 

“Ooooh, someone’s knickers got in a twist!” Mya retorted, giggling, and burst into a very wobbly, off-key song.

 

“You think he’s gorgeous – you want to kiss him – you want to shag him – shag him and marry him – ”

 

Sansa let out a much deeper sigh, picked up her books, and headed for her dorm room’s door.

 

“Good night, Mya,” she said.  “Try to fall asleep in your bed this time, OK?”

 

Mya pouted.  “I only did the floor twice, Sansa,” she protested.  “And you should try it.  Have fun.  Who does homework on a Friday night, anyway?  Specially if Joffrey’s your _boyfriend,_ you know.”

 

Sansa thought about reminding Mya that Joffrey had plans for tonight already – some frat thing or other – but Mya would forget in about two seconds.  Not, of course, that Mya would remember anything at all tomorrow morning, given her abundantly tipsy state at the moment.

 

“I’m seeing him tomorrow, Mya,” she replied.  “Good night.”

 

Mya giggled as her roommate shuffled past her.  “You want his _babies_ …”  Her discordant voice reverberated across the hall, only stopping when Sansa shut the door and headed to the merciful silence of the study lounge.  It was empty, so Sansa trudged over to her favorite table and set her books down with a sigh.  It was already midnight.  She needed to get at least three-quarters of the way through the French history paper due Monday before she went to bed, so that she could spend tomorrow with Joffrey Baratheon without having an impossible load of homework hanging over her head for Sunday.

 

Sansa flushed.  She could still hardly believe a boy like Joffrey had taken an interest in her.  He was tall, blond, gorgeous, rich, and athletic, which meant he had half the girls at Kings Landing University after him.  Sansa hadn’t even tried; she’d merely been relieved to have made any friends at all during the first term of her freshman year, since she’d spent most of her senior year in high school on the outs with every friend she had.  Luckily, Sansa had arrived at university to find herself assigned to share a room with Mya and her friend, Myranda Royce.  Myranda liked to knit almost as much as Sansa did and wrote poetry and music for the fun of it, which meant Sansa had taken an instant liking to her.  They’d chatted while Mya had covered her corner of the room in vintage Spice Girls posters, then promptly shut up when she’d announced that she was dragging them to Freshmen Night at the nearest club because she’d be darned if she let her brand-new roommates spend their first night at university knitting.

 

“You can thank me by making me a quilt later,” she’d informed them, raising one eyebrow and wiggling it while they both stared wide-eyed at her.  “Let’s go.”

 

They’d glimpsed Joffrey Baratheon that night, sharing a table with a few guys from his fraternity.  The blue overhead lighting had bounced off his eyes as he’d glanced over at Sansa, making them glow like gems – Sansa couldn’t decide between sapphires and amethysts and then had caught herself staring, blushed, and turned away.  As she did, Mya had elbowed her.

 

“Look at you,” she’d said, grinning like a Cheshire cat.  “Joffrey Baratheon’s checking you out, Sansa.”

 

Sansa had only blushed again.  One day on the King’s Landing campus had been more than enough time for her to discover that Joffrey, though just a sophomore, was its undisputed king, as he’d apparently been at Robett P. Glover Middle School until his family had moved away the year before Sansa had begun attending it.  Mya, who’d gone to high school with him at Casterly Rock Preparatory School, had idly mentioned he’d had the run of the place.  Which meant a boy like him didn’t check out freckled, chubby freshmen like Sansa, even if Mya had scoffed at Sansa calling herself the latter word.

 

Just then, though, their turn had come up at the counter, and Mya had said no more.  They’d downed cocktails (just one for Sansa, who refused to risk being too hungover to get to the next morning’s freshmen breakout session and giving her future professors reason to dislike her, which could lead to bad grades and a _lot_ of trouble from her parents), hollered their lungs out at the live band, and been fast friends since.  In fact, Sansa had loved her freshman year so much she’d found herself almost reluctant to return home for the summer. 

 

But one day while back at home, Sansa’s mother had made her drive Arya to karate class and Sansa had discovered a modern jazz dance class being held in the same building.  She’d persuaded her parents to let her try it and lost twenty pounds over the course of the summer, which had enabled her to fit back into the size-three clothes she’d grown out of in her junior year of high school.  It had also enabled her to catch the eye of Joffrey Baratheon, who’d spent the first week of the fall semester of her sophomore year shooting her appreciative grins across their biology classroom and asked her out at the end of it.  Sansa had barely been able to babble out a _yes, of course,_ but Joffrey had responded with one of those megawatt smiles that wiped Sansa’s mind blank.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

Sansa spent nearly two hours on Saturday choosing just the right dress and makeup palette for her date with Joffrey.  After all, Joffrey’s father, Robert Baratheon, was a senator in the Stormlands, and his mother, Cersei Lannister, was one of the richest socialites in Westeros, so Sansa had to look her classiest.  Still, Joffrey was a guy, and she needed to give him enough of a glance at something to hold his interest.  So, with Mya’s eye-rolling help, she chose a short green dress that had a respectable neckline but showcased her legs and shoulders to great effect.  She was just trying to decide whether or not to apply more eyeliner, which Mya said she should, when Joffrey arrived.  Sansa had known of him long enough to know he hated to be kept waiting, so she grabbed her black clutch and sweater and headed out the door.

 

Fortunately, she did not need to offer an opinion on the restaurant they’d go to – she and Mya had gone round and round about which place she should suggest, if asked – because Joffrey headed straight for his favorite restaurant.  Nor did she have to do much to keep up the conversation; Joffrey was only too eager to tell her all about the swim team’s latest training regimen, and which of the new coaches were idiots, and how his father was planning to launch his re-election campaign next summer.  Sansa, who was considering political science as a possible minor, asked several questions about the senator’s policies and strategies, but Joffrey grew bored with them after a while and began talking about how many pounds he and his mates wanted to bench-press at their next workout.  That bored Sansa just as much as some of her questions had bored Joffrey, although she supposed they could not be expected to share all of the same interests.  Still, she was relieved when the waitress arrived to ask if they wanted dessert. 

 

“I don’t need any,” said Joffrey.  “Just the check.”

 

Sansa, who had been on the verge of ordering some apple pie, pursed her lips together.  He might have thought to ask her if she wanted anything; but then, it was only a first date, so perhaps she should not expect him to spend too much on her.  Besides, it was nice that he’d offered to pay for both of them in the first place.  She didn’t want to take advantage of that generosity and make him think she was a gold-digger, like he said his last two girlfriends had been.

 

-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-

 

“You’re getting ice cream again?”

 

Sansa froze in the middle of swinging her leg over the bench seat of the cafeteria table.  Joffrey was staring at her as though she’d just announced she was running a marathon.

 

“Right,” she answered, although her good mood, which had been boosted by the news that she had received an A on last week’s English literature exam and Joffrey’s casual mention that his mother had asked if she would meet her son’s girlfriend any time soon – an honor she had only ever granted one other girl throughout his dating history – had already deflated a little bit. 

 

“Spring break’s coming up and all,” he said.  “Are you going to buy a new one in Sunspear if your other ones don’t fit?”

 

Sansa bit her lip.  She’d just spent three months’ wages from her work-study job on three new swimming suits that looked suitably upscale to take on her upcoming spring break trip with Joffrey and his friends, who by extension had become hers.  They’d introduced Sansa to a new world of upscale stores, fine wines, gourmet food, and the latest in couture fashion, all of which they intended to imbibe in on the trip.  It had taken her hours in the store and a whole lot of eye-rolling from Mya, as well as a good deal of reassurance that nothing she was trying on made her look fat, to choose the ones she thought would look classy enough for her new friends, and, of course, for Joffrey’s family, should she meet them.  She didn’t think she had put on any weight since she’d bought the suits, but they were all on the snug side, and the idea of any of them being too tight mortified her to no end.  She sighed and sank back onto the bench.

 

“I guess I won’t, then,” she said, and was rewarded with a smile from Joffrey.

 

“Right,” he replied, just as his phone rang.  He rolled his eyes and answered it.  “Hi, Mum…Nope…You’re going when?...Yeah…Do I have to…OK, fine, I’ll ask her…Bye.”

 

He winked at somebody behind Sansa.  She turned to see Roslin Frey strutting past their table and held back a sigh.  Roslin had the figure Sansa had always envied: a willow-thin waist, perfect hourglass curves, and a dancer’s derriere so taut a quarter would bounce back off of it.  Sansa had caught Joffrey and his buddies whistling at Roslin several times now, and although she knew Joffrey meant nothing by it, the sound still stung a bit every time the noise left his mouth.  Roslin bore a striking physical resemblance to Shiera Seastar, who was Westeros’s highest-paid supermodel and had Joffrey often remarked that there was a body worth fucking.  It was no wonder then, Sansa supposed, that he liked to look at Roslin’s.  But Sansa’s body was nothing like theirs.  Her torso was longer, her chest was smaller, and her stomach definitely stuck out more, no matter how many miles she ran at the school’s indoor track.  She’d tried to make up for it in other ways, and Joffrey had few complaints about anything when she pleasured him the way he liked, but she still wished the sight of her would make him whistle just once the way he did at Shiera and Roslin.

 

“Hey, are you deaf?”  Joffrey’s shrill voice snapped Sansa out of her reverie.

 

“No, sorry,” she said.  “What was that?”

 

Joffrey rolled his eyes.  “My mother wants you to visit the house for Easter break.”

 

“Oh.”  Sansa bit her lip.  Joffrey frowned at her – he hated it when she did that – and she quickly retracted her teeth.  “I’d – but, oh, I’d told my parents last week that I’d come home.”

 

Joffrey rolled his eyes.  “So tell them you won’t.  My mother wants to meet you.”

 

Sansa bit her tongue so that her teeth wouldn’t grab her lip again.  Catelyn Stark would let her daughter have it for backing out of the family’s Easter gathering.  On the other hand, Sansa had been waiting for months for an invitation to meet Joffrey’s parents, and if she worded things just right to her own, perhaps they would see his invitation as the privilege it was.  She could even offer to bring Joffrey home to meet them during summer break in return.  After all, they already knew she was dating someone handsome, wealthy, well-connected, and practically assured a place in whatever MBA program he wanted to join.  Once they met him, they could not possibly stay cross at her for skipping out on one Easter dinner.  They might be happy, really happy, about Sansa’s decisions for once.

 

They might even show as much pride in her, especially if she got straight As for the semester, as they had shown in Robb when he’d gotten his football scholarship

 

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“You can be ready by ten o’clock, can’t you, little dove?”

 

Sansa cringed inwardly, even as she mustered the sweetest smile she could for Cersei Lannister.

 

“Of course,” she answered, and Joffrey’s mother patted her cheek, causing another invisible cringe.

 

“Good girl,” said Cersei, and promptly swept out of the room.

 

Sansa sat down on her bed and sighed.  Two days ago, when they’d first met, she had tried her best to make a good impression on the older woman.  She’d worn her most expensive blouse, picked out the pants that made her look the thinnest, smiled as sweetly as she’d known how, and used short, direct sentences, refraining from using any of what Joffrey called “fancy-ass words” because, as he’d informed her, Cersei Lannister took none too kindly to any woman who tried to appear smarter than she.  Of course, Sansa was used to filtering herself in a similar way with Joffrey, who had a similar disdain for his girlfriend’s full use of her vocabulary.  It made little sense to Sansa, since Joffrey often bragged to his buddies that his girlfriend was both hot and smart, but she supposed he needed to feel smart too, and held her tongue.

 

However, all of Sansa’s smiles and courtesies had earned her a lengthy and nerve-wracking stare from Joffrey’s mother before the woman sniffed and extended her hand, apparently satisfied that Sansa was at least tolerable – in pointed contrast to her husband, who had given Sansa an appreciative glance, a stifling bear hug, and an exclamation that Joffrey had done well to bring home an “eleven out of ten.”  His wife, who had raised a steely eyebrow at him at that pronouncement in a way that had made Sansa cringe, had barely spoken to Sansa since then, and not at all since she had guided Sansa through the family’s thirteenth-century mansion to her bedroom.  That evening at dinner, when Sansa had been explaining free indirect discourse and its use in Luwin’s _A Tale of Two Castles_ to Myrcella, Cersei had cut into their conversation by saying she’d heard that that Sansa’s name meant “little dove” in Old Valyrian, and begun calling her “little dove” ever since.  Sansa had briefly entertained the idea of explaining that the portion of the name meaning “little” could also be translated “fiery,” but thought better of it.

 

Sansa spent most of the rest of the break avoiding both of Joffrey’s parents as best she could, which meant she often found herself in the company of Joffrey’s siblings, Myrcella and Tommen, both of whom she found surprisingly charming and polite.  Spending time with them proved to be the highlight of Sansa’s trip, for Joffrey spent most of it complaining about breakfast being too cold or the pool being too warm or the grass on the golf course not being cut right.  Two nights before the break ended, as Sansa was applying her makeup for the family’s outing to yet another fancy restaurant, Joffrey glared at her legs and, just as Sansa opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, reached over and pinched her thigh.

 

“Good God, you can’t wear that dress,” he said over the sound of Sansa’s startled yelp.  “You look like a stuffed sausage in it with all the weight you’ve gained.”  He gestured toward the closet.  “My mother won’t like it.  You should put on another one.”

 

He stalked out of the room, and tears rolled down Sansa’s cheeks as she rubbed her injured thigh.  She supposed that the stress of spending a week with his mother had gotten to him – it had certainly gotten to Sansa – but she hadn’t gained much weight on the trip.  She wiped her eyes and stared at her profile in the mirror.  Well, maybe she was a little thicker around the middle than she had been before break, and the dress’s thin material wasn’t doing her any favors.  She sighed and headed for the closet.

 

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“I can do the dishes, Mum,” Sansa offered.  She was proud of herself for keeping the tremor out of her voice.  That was more than could be said for her parents, who apparently lacked that pride even though Sansa had been on her best behavior the entire night.  She hadn’t argued with Arya or rolled her eyes while her parents asked Robb all about the grad schools to which he was planning to apply, and whenever they’d paused for breath, she’d tried to bring Joffrey into the conversation so he didn’t sulk about being ignored and ruin his first meeting with her parents.  He’d already slipped up once by calling them Ned and Catelyn instead of Mr. and Mrs. Stark, which Sansa had tried to prevent beforehand by explaining how important it was in the North to address one’s partner’s parents by their titles until they gave one permission to use their first names.

 

But Catelyn Stark’s steely stare said she hadn’t forgiven Joffrey, even though the rest of the evening had gone tolerably well, and Sansa had known even before she’d packed Joffrey off to his hotel for the night (he’d refused her parents’ invitation to stay with them, which Sansa had also worked overtime to try and smooth over) that she had an uphill battle in front of her.

 

“You’d better change out of your dress, then,” Catelyn replied now, and Sansa shuffled obediently off to her room.  Uphill had just turned into up-the-cliff.

 

She returned to the kitchen to find her mother slotting the silverware into the dishwasher’s bottom compartment with a firmness Sansa knew meant the older woman was well out of sorts.

 

“I can get it all, Mum,” she said meekly.  Catelyn Stark straightened up and pursed her lips.

 

“You’re a smart girl, Sansa,” she said, and Sansa blinked.  Whatever she had expected her mother to say, that had not been it.

 

“You can do better than a boy like that,” Catelyn continued, and Sansa felt her shoulders slump.

 

“Mum, you’ve only known him a couple of hours,” she began.  Catelyn put her hands on her hips.

 

“That’s enough to know you can do better,” she said.  “That boy clearly thinks he’s above you, which he most certainly is not, considering you could have gotten into any pre-law program you might have applied to.”

 

Sansa barely kept herself from rolling her eyes at the recurrence of the nearly three-year-old argument.  “Mum, Joffrey has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t want to be a lawyer,” she replied, modulating her voice as best she could.  “And he gets that I’m smart, otherwise he wouldn’t tell his friends that.”  Well, at least he used to do it before he’d taken to commenting on Sansa’s weight so much lately, but her parents did not need to know that.

 

Catelyn Stark, however, seemed entirely unconvinced.  “And I don’t like the way he looks at you,” she continued.

 

“Oh, good God, me neither,” said Robb, sauntering into the kitchen.  Sansa let out the exasperated sigh she’d been trying her best to hold back.

 

“Oh, who asked you, Robert?” she retorted.  Robb took a step backward and held out both hands.

 

“Hey,” he protested mildly.  “All I meant is that you’re not a piece of meat, Sans.  That’s how he looks at you.”  He glanced sideways at his mother.  “At least, when he wasn’t insulting you for wanting dessert.  You deserve a guy who doesn’t do that, princess.”

 

He reached out to rub her shoulder, but Sansa jerked away.

 

“Just because you’ve known him for all of three hours – ” she began, but was interrupted when Ned Stark walked into the room and asked what was going on.

 

“They’re insulting Joffrey now that he’s left,” Sansa snapped.

 

“Sansa Lyarra,” began Catelyn, at the same moment Robb protested, “Hey, I’m just – ”

 

Ned held up his hand.  “Insulting him,” he asked, “or giving opinions, Sansa?”

 

Sansa’s eyes had filled with tears by now.  “Fine,” she said, trying to blink them away.  “Both.”

 

“All I said is that you can do better than that boy,” said Catelyn, her voice as sharp as Joffrey’s had been at the dinner table when he’d grabbed her hand and said he thought she wasn’t eating desserts any more. 

 

“I agree with that,” said Ned, “but, Catelyn – ”

 

“Oh, never bloody mind!” burst out Sansa.  The tears, having won the battle, were now trickling down her cheeks.  “You’ll all agree like you always do.  It doesn’t matter what girls Robb brings over; you always find something nice to say about them!  But all I do is bring one home and he’s not good enough, just like King’s Landing isn’t good enough and straight As aren’t even good enough because being an English teacher isn’t as good as being a lawyer, right?  Nothing’s ever good enough for you!”

 

“Sansa Lyarra – ” Catelyn’s eyes flashed, but Sansa paid them no mind.  Before her mother could say another word, she turned and fled from the room.

 

Joffrey was surprised and more than a little annoyed when she showed up at his hotel room, but Sansa could not stand the thought of spending another moment under her parents’ roof that night, so she did the only thing she could think to do, which was to drop to her knees and suck on Joffrey until he was speechless.  She even let him finish in her mouth, doing her best to ignore the gagging that inevitably resulted due to Joffrey’s love of shoving himself as far in as she could take him.  She hoped he’d pleasure her afterwards, but when she dared to bring up the subject, he smacked her arm away and said he’d have a much easier time being turned on if her thighs – both of which he pinched at once, making Sansa bite her tongue to stifle her yelp at the pain – were each a couple of inches thinner.

 

So the next day, Sansa woke up early to use the hotel’s workout room.  And later that week, when Joffrey asked her to move in with him at the beginning of the following school term, she said yes.

 

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Sansa tried to still her arm as she poured Joffrey’s coffee, but it kept trembling no matter what she tried.

 

Every day this week, he’d complained that Sansa had burnt it.  That was ridiculous, of course, since he was the one who kept insisting they buy the same beans from the same company, was known for over-roasting its beans, but Sansa knew better by now than to protest, because that would only earn her a smack to the arm at best and Joffrey’s hand across her mouth at worst.

 

She sighed as she poured a few spoonfuls of water into Joffrey’s coffee thermos, which she hoped would dilute it enough to please him.  This semester could not end quickly enough for her.  The stress of applying to half a dozen MBA programs had made Joffrey’s temper even shorter than usual, and Sansa often bore the brunt of that temper, taking a slap to the shoulder, the arm, or even the face on occasion when she did not arrange things in their townhouse in exactly the way Joffrey liked them. 

 

Joffrey stalked into the kitchen, book bag in hand, and snatched the thermos off the counter.  He took a sip of the coffee and made a face.

 

“Good God, woman, can you make it any worse?” he snapped.  Sansa cringed.

 

“It’s the same beans you like, Joff – I even left them a – a bit longer, like you said – ”

 

Joffrey snarled, and before Sansa could say another word, he yanked off the top of the coffee machine, snatched out the bag of grounds with one hand, and grabbed Sansa’s hair at the roots with the other.  Sansa cried out, but her scream was muffled by the grounds, which Joffrey stuffed unceremoniously into her mouth.  A few of them got loose and spilled down Sansa’s throat.  She gagged and clawed at her neck.  Only then did Joffrey release her hair, causing Sansa to stumble backward and knock her head on the kitchen counter.  Sansa screamed again and clutched her head in pain, and when Joffrey bent down to sneer in her face, she saw two faces and two mocking grins directed at her.

 

“Try harder tomorrow,” he hissed, then straightened up and strode out the door.

 

It took Sansa almost half an hour to put both herself and the kitchen to rights.  Well, not entirely to rights – she had a couple of brand-new bruises on her face, not to mention a stinging welt on the back of her head.  She pasted as much makeup as she could over the bruises and arranged her hair so as to cover the lump, a routine she’d more or less perfected by now, and grabbed her book bag off the end table in the living room.  She turned to look at the clock and sighed.  Even if she hurried, she’d be at least fifteen minutes late to her Renaissance literature class.  Joffrey’s morning fits had already made her late several times that term.  Two more and she’d be docked half a grade for the semester.   _Shit._

 

She hastily opened the front pocket of her bag just to make sure she had her phone, only to discover it wasn’t there.  Sansa swore out loud this time and headed back to the bedroom just as she heard the phone buzzing from the other table in the living room.  She grabbed it just in time to see Robb’s name flashing across the top of the screen.

 

Sansa sighed and clicked the silencer button before tossing the phone into her bag.  Her parents had spent much of the prior summer trying to dissuade her from moving in with Joffrey and, when it had become clear that Sansa was doing it anyway, had refused to pay her tuition for the first semester of her junior year.  Fortunately, Sansa’s grades had qualified her for a couple of extra scholarships that had covered most of the cost, and she’d saved enough money from her summer job to pay the rest.  Her parents had been furious, but after a few weeks, her father had begun calling and even texting her – Bran or Rickon, Sansa thought, must have shown him how.  She’d refused to answer his calls, though, and she’d done the same for her siblings, albeit far more reluctantly, when practically all they did when they called was try to get her to break up with Joffrey.  She still cried sometimes when she thought of the text she’d sent Rickon trying to explain things, but her mother was using him to guilt-trip her, and Sansa would not stand for it.  Even Cersei Lannister never tried to guilt-trip Sansa, difficult as she otherwise might be to deal with.

 

Arya and Robb, however, had continued to call and text Sansa occasionally until a bit after Christmas.  Arya had actually cried leaving her last voicemail, which had kept Sansa awake all night in misery, but Robb had not given up – at least, not yet.

 

Sansa figured he would soon enough.

 

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“Jesus fucking _CHRIST_!”

 

Sansa, who had shut herself in the study, cringed.  She’d picked up Joffrey’s dry cleaning that morning, only to find that the cleaners had burned a couple of his shirts.  She had ordered replacements online, hung up the clean shirts in Joffrey’s closet, and put the burnt ones in hers in the faint hope that he would not decide to wear either of them until the new ones showed up in the mail.

 

Instead, judging from the outburst she’d just heard, in addition to the thumping of his steps down the hallways, he’d clearly discovered them.  So much for that hope, thought Sansa as Joffrey rattled the study’s door handle.

 

“What did you do to my shirts, you fucking whore?  Open the door!  OPEN IT, SANSA!”

 

Sansa cringed again.  She’d get a beating no matter what she did now, but perhaps Joffrey would lessen it if she obeyed him now and opened the door.  On the other hand –

 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door crashing against the wall.  Sansa screamed, crouched into a ball, and threw her arms over her head just as Joffrey grabbed a strand of her long hair and yanked it nearly out of her head.  She screamed again, cursing herself as she did so.  Screaming only ever fed Joffrey’s bloodlust, and right now he had a hell of a lot of it raging through his veins.

 

Joffrey’s fist connected with the side of Sansa’s head, and she choked back another scream.  She grabbed his arm, but he yanked it away and struck her again at the same time his right foot connected with her ribs, knocking the wind out of her.  She still managed a feeble kick at his shins, but that earned her a boot to the other side.  She forced her knees upward to protect herself just as he yanked her head back and slammed it into the wall.

 

“My – best shirt – you – fucking little _cunt_ – ” he grunted between blows to her face and back.  Sansa’s teeth rattled, and she tasted a trickle of blood running down her throat.  Joffrey’s fist connected with her jaw, and the bloody taste intensified.  She coughed, and Joffrey howled with laughter.

 

 _Oh, gods._   That meant he was just getting started.  Sansa curled up as tightly as she could and prayed that the gods would let her pass out as quickly as possible.

 

Just then, the doorbell rang.  Joffrey mumbled a string of curses, kicked Sansa once again for good measure, and strode out of the room.  Sansa rolled over onto her side, wincing the entire way.  Her ribs felt like a mouthful of jarred teeth, and she could feel the bruises forming on her arms.  When she reached up onto the desk for her phone, her shoulder screamed in protest, and she had to force herself to crawl another foot through the agony to finish the trip.  Calling anyone of whom Joffrey didn’t approve – meaning any of her family members and most of her friends – would earn her a beating, but he couldn’t beat her if she was in the hospital, and this time she wouldn’t let him threaten her out of filing charges against him, as he’d done the previous two times she’d been there.

 

 _But if his parents paid to get him out of trouble again –_ They’d do it, Sansa knew, and furthermore, they probably had enough clout not only to keep Cersei Lannister’s precious baby legally unscathed, but to press charges against her for slander and pay off a judge.  At best, she’d have to leave school, and at worst –

 

Sansa’s hand hesitated above the phone.  Then it rang.

 

She hesitated a few moments, but finally her thumb swiped the button to answer the call.  She cursed as she did to at the pang that sliced up her arm all the way to her elbow.

 

“Whoa!  Sansa?  Is that you?  Hello?”

 

Sansa gulped in disbelief, inhaling another round of blood as she did so.

 

“Sansa?  Hello?”

 

Sansa tried to pick up the phone, but her fingers wouldn’t close all the way around it – she figured a couple of them at least had to be broken – and it fell to the ground.  At least it landed faceup, she thought, as she croaked her brother’s name.

 

“Robb?”

 

“Sansa!”  He sounded worried again, as he had in the last few voicemails he’d left her.  “Are you OK?”

 

Sansa gulped again.  “Robb,” she repeated, then made the mistake of trying to turn her head.  It nearly exploded from the pain.

 

“Sansa?  Hey, where are you?”

 

Sansa shut her eyes until her brain felt a little less like it was detaching itself from the inside of her skull.  She mumbled her address to Robb as another wave of spasms wrenched its way upward from her neck.

 

“I’m coming now, Sansa, OK?  Sansa, can you hear me?”  Robb was yelling into his phone now, which made Sansa’s ears ring.

 

“Robb,” she groaned again, and passed out cold on the study floor.

 

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Sansa heard thumping and curses coming from downstairs.  Then someone yelled her name, but the voice wasn’t Joffrey’s.  She must be dreaming.  Only Joffrey would be yelling at her that loudly.

 

More scuffling came from the entryway.  Then it moved down the hallway toward Sansa.  She tried to get up, but her limbs hung from her frame like dead weights.

 

“You dare – ”

 

“She’s my _sister,_ you animal – ” _Thump._

“My parents – ”  That was definitely Joffrey’s voice.  There was another thump and the sound of two men cursing loudly.

 

“That _whore_ – ”  Joffrey screamed, just before the loudest thump yet reverberated across the hall.  Sansa’s ears rang again.  She tried to prop herself up and crawl across the floor, but pain shot up from both her wrists, through her shoulders, and into her skull.  She collapsed on the floor and heard no more.

 

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When Sansa woke again, everything around her was light and white and blinding.  For a moment she wondered if there actually was an afterlife and she’d somehow made her way to it.  She tried to sit up, but a searing pain shot up her arm, and she collapsed backward.

 

Then she saw her father’s face materialize in front of her.

 

“Oh, thank gods,” said a hoarse feminine voice, and a moment later Sansa saw her mother.  She had more wrinkles in her face than Sansa remembered, and the roots of her auburn hair were peppered with streaks of gray.  Sansa frowned, trying to reconcile her mother’s appearance with her own memory, which was turning up surprisingly blank at the moment.

 

Then she heard the buzzing of a phone next to her bedside.

 

 _Robb,_ she thought, and felt the pains traveling up and down her arms, and remembered Joffrey’s shrieks and his fists and the thumping.

 

“Robb,” she murmured, and both of her parents’ faces darkened.  Sansa pushed her legs against the bed and tried in vain to prop herself up.  Three pairs of hands caught her body as it collapsed against the bed and pushed several pillows under her back.  Sansa stabilized just in time to see Arya, Bran, and Rickon materializing within her field of vision.

 

“Where’s Robb?” she asked.  For a moment they were all silent.  Panic blossomed from Sansa’s chest into her throat.

 

“Where is he?”  That came out much more loudly than she’d intended.  Her father held up his hand.

 

“He’s fine, Sansa,” he replied.  “He can’t be here right now, but he’s fine.”

 

Tears filled Sansa’s eyes.  “Then where is he?” she asked.  Her voice had risen by an octave.  Her parents looked at each other, both sets of eyebrows raised, before Arya cut in.

 

“House arrest,” she said.  “Fuckface and its parents had him arrested for beating him up.  His stupid lawyers won’t back off.”  She glanced at her parents briefly before continuing.  “They want to hear you testify first.”

 

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Joffrey’s parents, it turned out, had almost as much clout as Sansa had feared.  Robert Baratheon only had Robb’s charges dropped when Robb volunteered to leave school a semester short of graduation and enter the military to train under Robert’s brother Stannis, who was apparently one of the meanest drill sergeants in the army.

 

“I’ll be fine, Sans,” he reassured her as she embraced him in farewell.  “Be home before you know it.”

 

Sansa’s face crumpled, and she held him as tightly as she could.  She should be the one leaving, not Robb.  That would be better for everybody.  She was already leaving school as it was; she couldn’t imagine returning, not with Joffrey on the loose.  And gods knew she couldn’t stay at her parents’ house for long, either.  She’d had no other place to go when the hospital had finally released her, but the day she’d come home had been the day Robb’s military application had been accepted, and Catelyn had wept and snapped at Sansa for getting her brother into that predicament in the first place.

 

“I hope you understand one day how much your brother has done for you, Sansa Lyarra,” she’d spat at a gaping Sansa.  “He is literally putting his life on the line because of you.  I hope you’re as proud of him as you were of yourself for choosing that piece of trash over your family in the first place.”

 

“You chose your money over me,” Sansa had spat back, and things had devolved rapidly from there.  Both women had been screaming by the time Ned, Robb, and Arya had intervened and gotten them into separate rooms.

 

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_December 18, 931 AC_

 

Sansa blinked away the tears clouding her eyes.  A string of curses flew through her mind as she hit the “enter” key on her keyboard with a little more force than usual.

 

She thought she’d steeled herself permanently against these reactions.  No good ever came of crying over spilled milk, after all.  And no amount of crying would bring Robb back, or make her family speak to her again.

 

Or get her out of debt.  That thought made her curse herself again for forgetting to make her next payment the previous night.  Granted, she’d been feeling quite under the weather, but deadlines were deadlines, and she needed to enter her payment information before 8:00 that evening, or she’d incur late fees and extend her timeline.

 

And Sansa really, really did not want to extend that timeline beyond her 40th birthday.  Forty years was simply too long to live this way.  She’d made her peace with that fact a long time ago.

 

No, 51.7459 months was more than long enough.

 

“Um – excuse me, miss?”

 

The voice was hesitant and quite soft, but Sansa still jumped in her chair.  She was technically covering the reception desk while Alyssa Velaryon was on her lunch break and Alyssa’s normal backup staff person was out sick, but the credit card processing department got very few visitors as a rule. 

 

Sansa looked up to see that this visitor was a man of about her own age.  He had the grayest eyes Sansa had ever seen and a head full of thick, dark curls pulled back at the nape of his neck.  He did not look terribly tall, but he stood ramrod-straight – the way Robb had when he’d come home from military training camp, Sansa thought, and another pang flashed through her chest.

 

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice higher than she liked it.  The man, however, did not seem to mind.

 

“I’m looking for Sansa Stark,” he said.  “Does she work in this department?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Free indirect discourse is a literary device in which an author conveys a character's thoughts and feelings by weaving them into the narrative without using quotation marks to set them off from the rest of the text. I learned about it recently while taking an online course about historical fiction, and the teacher provided an example of it from - you guessed it - Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.

**Author's Note:**

> Everybody suffers differently, but nobody should have to suffer alone! Readers, if you ever feel thoughts like Sansa's, please, please, please don't hesitate to reach out for help! Here's a list of numbers you can call for free, day or night, to find someone who will listen to you and find the best resources for your particular struggles: https://www.healthyplace.com/suicide/suicide-hotline-phone-numbers.


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